2016 Newsletter Archive

YouTube Talks About 360-Degree Video"360 is a video format that unlike traditional video, is capturing in full 360, so full spherical," commented Kurt Wilms, Senior Product Manager at YouTube. "When we talk about 360 at YouTube, we're talking about filming content and viewing content in this new video format."08.09.16

Social Media is a Key Driver of Ecommerce
Felim McGrath, who is the Trends Manager at GlobalWebIndex, believes that social media will be a driving force encouraging online shopping. He says that one third of the world's population is now on social media, which is up an astounding 10% over last year.08.02.16

LinkedIn Study Shows that Millennials are Not Just Lazy, Entitled and Unemployed
A LinkedIn study recently took a look a Millennials in an attempt to erase the stereotype that they are lazy, entitled and unemployed. "Given the massive amounts of news coverage (44,000 articles and counting), it seems like everyone is desperate to understand my generation," said Alexandra Rynne who contributed to LinkedIn's Millennial Playbook (PDF). "Thankfully, we don't have to rely on stereotypes or sensationalism to find out."07.19.16

109 million Tweets Related to #EURO2016"We used peak detection algorithm to detect spikes and snap goals to the closest spikes," explained Krist Wongsuphasawat (@kristw), a Twitter Data Scientist who works on data visualization at Twitter. "There are many ways we can measure "excitement". Using raw number of Tweets could be one way, but we chose to normalized the data such that each goal is measured as a percentage of total Tweets in that game, in order to make the goals comparable across the entire tournament. Otherwise, any goal in later matches will easily beat the group stage goals, as those matches attract many more viewers. However, using percentage overcompensated for the matches with fewer viewers so we had to add another weight to adjust the value based on total volume in a match."07.12.16

Facebook Changes Newsfeed Making Friends Post More ProminentFacebook announced an upcoming algorithmic change to the newsfeed which will result in less referrals from business pages and more posts from friends at the top of your feed. Facebook is going to rank posts from your friends higher than posts from pages you liked.07.05.16

Twitter Videos Can Now Be 140 Seconds & Vine Too!
Starting today Twitter users can post videos up to 140 seconds, matching the tweet character limit. Previously, videos were limited to just 30 seconds on Twitter and 6 seconds on Twitters Vine product. Vine will also begin to slowly rolling out 140 second videos as an experiment to see how users react.06.28.16

Dark Social Sharing Is Now At 84%
Global Dark Social sharing is now 84% of all consumer sharing of publisher and marketer content according to a new study by RadiumOne. Dark Social activity is considered to be sharing of content via private channels such as email or messaging.06.14.16

Instagram Users Upset With Post ReorderingBack in March Instagram announced that it would at some point start reordering posts in an attempt to keep users more interested. On average, 70% of posts by a user are not viewed. They have been testing this feature with a portion of their users and are reporting increased engagement.06.07.16

Get Your Branded Email and Social PlatformStreamSend Private Label offers agencies and resellers the ability to fully white label our powerful email marketing and social media platform. It is an easy way to diversify your portfolio and provide your clients with an additional product under your brand, boosting your bottom line.05.17.16

Are you ready for the communications degree that will take you places?How we communicate is changing. Stay ahead of the curve with a degree from Philadelphia University. Our fully online, flexible B.S. in Professional Communications and Emerging Media features an innovative curriculum that gives you the skills to navigate new and traditional media for communications roles of all types. Build your portfolio and learn to craft effective communication at PhilaU, where a world-class education is at your fingertips.04.15.16

Have You Explored Facebook's New Video Metric Breakdowns?
Back in February, Facebook rolled out a redesigned video metrics interface in Page Insights, adding new metrics that had been highly requested. These included Minutes Viewed and 10-Second Views to go along with existing metrics like Unique Viewers, Views, and Average % Completion. At the time, they also added a breakdown for sound-on vs. sound-off to go along with the organic vs. paid breakdown.04.04.16

Live Video is Officially a Much Bigger Deal on Facebook
Live video is officially a much bigger deal on Facebook now. The company announced that it now takes this into account when ranking content in the News Feed. In early December, Facebook began letting a small percentage of people in the U.S. stream live video from their iPhones. 03.07.16

Communication is Changing | Keep Up at Point Park UniversityThe nature of communication is changing. Keep up with an online Master of Arts in Communication Technology from Point Park University. Develop the practical, relevant skills you need in media, design and writing, so you’re prepared for the communication careers of today and tomorrow.01.14.16

3 Monster Social Media Metrics You Absolutely MUST Track
When it comes to social media, there’s no shortage of metrics that you can monitor to determine whether or not your efforts are successful. It’s easy to get buried in the maze of data trying to make heads or tails of it all. Stare at it too long and you’re liable to bang your head against your desk a few times.01.11.16